The art of sexile: It's perhaps the most sacred of all college maxims, the unspoken code of conduct that keeps lusty teenagers and cramped dorm rooms at peace.

Yet, students at our favorite Medford safety school seem to have had some trouble accepting and adhering to this age-old social decree—prompting administrators to lay down some intimacy rules:

A new addition to the Tufts student guest policy states:

You may not engage in sexual activity while your roommate is present in the room. Any sexual activity within your assigned room should not ever deprive your roommate(s) of privacy, study, or sleep time.

Furthermore:

Students may allow overnight guests as long as his/her roommate (if applicable) has given permission for this to occur [...] Students may not host more than two (2) overnight guests at a time.

It's hard to imagine how this will be enforced, although the handbook says that "actions will be properly documented and subject to residential judicial consequences. Any flagrant violation [...] will result in immediate loss of guest privileges for a specified time period."

See how they're justifying the policy after the jump.

According to The Tufts Daily, the new policy was triggered by a "significant number of complaints last year from residents bothered by their roommates' social behavior," and the Tufts Office of Residential Life and Learning's assistant director told the newspaper that the incidents "happened more often than we'd like." But the Office emphasized that the new policy was aimed more at "facilitat[ing] conversation and compromise between roommates" than hindering "personal or private activity."

Seriously? Has there really been such a broach of civility to necessitate formal, explicit intervention? Cue student backlash:

"I don't believe it's the university's place to determine what goes on in a room," Freshman Jon Levinson told the Associated Press. "Personally, I wouldn't want to have sex in front of my roommate, and my roommate wouldn't want to have sex in front of me."

FlyBy sure hopes so—as much as Tufts bores us, we'd rather not learn that it's secretly become a breeding ground for voyeurism.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Arma